


a simpler place in time

by ElisAttack



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bisexuality, Carol is the mcu butch we all deserve, Don't Ask Don't Tell, F/F, Lesbian Character, Memory Loss, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 17:56:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18124595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisAttack/pseuds/ElisAttack
Summary: It starts like this: Carol blows up.Actually, it starts like this: Carol falls down, then she gets right back up again.  Her dad shakes his head at her bruised knees and cut face, and calls her unladylike.  She says fuck him, and fuck any man that tells her what to do.





	a simpler place in time

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Gladys Knight’s Midnight Train To Georgia because I’m nothing if not predictable, and because Motown is the best.
> 
> Edit: someone in the comments just informed me that DADT was instated in 94, and well, just imagine that in a fic about a solar-powered, alien-fighting lady lovin on her girl, Bill Clinton ran for president and was elected instead of Bush Sr. Or just anything else that makes sense...

It starts like this: Carol blows up.

Actually, it starts like this: Carol falls down, then she gets right back up again.  Her dad shakes his head at her bruised knees and cut face, and calls her unladylike. She says fuck him, and fuck any man that tells her what to do.

She fights her way into the airforce, then fights her way up the ranks.  She’s a cadet, and they tell her she’s not strong enough to be an airman.  She’s a staff sergeant, and they tell her she’s not smart enough to be a commissioned officer.  She’s a lieutenant, and they tell her she doesn’t have the balls to make captain. She’s a captain, and they tell her she can only fly test planes.  So she does. She flies the planes Dr. Lawson makes, and they go further and faster than anything any man has ever touched.

***

“You're a damn cheat,”  Maria climbs out of her car, huffing and puffing up a storm.  The sun beats down on them, heat rising in waves from the parched earth.

Maria's gorgeous when she's riled up; hair windswept, mouth twisted.  She stomps around to Carol's ride, leans against the door frame, poking her head through the open window.  Carol lets her aviators slide down her nose, grinning madly. The dust from her tires’ wake swirls around Maria's heels.

Carol has loved Maria since they were kids.  Wanted her since they were teens. Been in love with her since she admitted applying for the cadet program, and Maria quipped a simple, “Where do I sign up?”

Carol had confessed her feelings only a few seconds after she knew herself, because that's the way she is.  She doesn't keep things locked up, she lets everyone and anyone know exactly what she feels. They sat down and talked about it, but in the end Maria still apologized.

“But you forgive me anyway?”  Carol prompts, pushing her glasses back into place.

Maria rolls her eyes, and pretends to think it over, tapping a finger against her jaw.  She bends at the waist, leaning fully into Carol's car, close enough that if Carol was a selfish bitch she could pull her in for a kiss.

“You already know the answer to that.”

***

Carol's there for Monica's first breath of air.  She's the third person to hold her after the OB and Maria.  Carol takes that for the privilege it is. Monica’s placed in Carol's arms, in the cradle of that old but soft leather jacket she bought when she finally became an officer.

“She's going to think you're her momma,”  the OB says when Monica immediately stops crying, tiny fists struggling to grab at the leather.  Carol stares into her wrinkled face helplessly, then looks up into Maria's tired eyes.

“She already has a mom,”  Carol says, carefully passing Monica to Maria's dad who coos at the baby with all the enthusiasm of a man who has wanted nothing more than to be a grandfather.

“You'll be her Auntie Carol,”  Maria croaks, dark circles under her eyes.  The result of a long, harrowing labour. Carol suspects that she has matching circles under her eyes.  She was with Maria every step of the way, from the ambulance ride, until her fingernails dug bleeding crescents into Carol's palm at that final push.

“I guess that means I need to learn how to change a diaper,”  Carol says, her hand still aching. Maria’s got a hell of a grip.

Maria’s face splits into a relieved grin, sagging into the pillows arranged at her back.  “Thankfully babies come with instruction manuals. It’s like an oil change, and we both know how to do that.”  She laughs when her mom swats her for her crudeness.

***

“Never fall in love with a straight girl,”  a broken-hearted lounge singer sighs. She climbs into the seat beside Carol, dressed to the nines in a dusty dive bar somewhere in San Francisco.

 _Ten years too late for that_ , Carol thinks wryly, face hidden behind a baseball cap as she sips her beer.  She lifts a finger to the bartender and buys the woman a drink.

***

She’s sitting in medical, her arm in a sling, lip bloodied and torn, possibly suffering from a concussion, when Maria bursts in through the double doors.  Surprised, Carol looks up from the _Captain America_ comic she was barely absorbing.  There isn’t a whole lot of varied reading material on base.

“They told me someone t-boned your car?”  Maria says, harried. Her flight suit hangs from her waist, undershirt a pitch black, like just she heard the news in the locker room and came running.

Carol winces, setting the comic aside on the table.  “Yeah, a couple of cadets thought it would be a hoot to drink and drive.”  Maria sits on the edge of the cot, and Carol scoots over to make room for her.  “Nothing’s broke, it’s fine. They weren’t even going that fast.”

Maria still looks worried, so Carol reaches across the covers and takes her hand.  “I’m fine, I promise.”

“Don’t scare me like that.”  Maria turns fully to face her, tucking a leg under herself, she threads her fingers with Carol’s, palm to palm.

“I…”  Carol says helplessly, staring down at their entwined fingers.  With her other hand Maria touches the elbow poking from the sling.  Carol’s breath hitches in her chest. Goosebumps rise on her skin, and Maria would have to be blind not to notice them.   

“I thought I lost my chance years ago,”  Maria says carefully, drawing back until their only point of contact is their clasped hands.  She runs a thumb over Carol’s knuckle, lingering on the bandaid there. “Tell me, Carol, did I lose my chance?”

Carol shivers.

Maria doesn’t look at her, she stares somewhere in the direction of Carol’s collar.  “I know you spend your leave in San Francisco, and I know what you do when you’re there.”  Maria clenches her jaw, finally looking up. Her eyes burn with determination. “Be straight with me.”

“I’ve never been straight in my life,”  Carol says.

The tension lessens a touch, but Maria still asks,  “Do you have a woman waiting for you in the big city?”

Carol shakes her head.  “As if you don’t already know the answer to that question.”

The setting sun shines on through the half open blinds as Maria cups Carol’s jaw in her calloused hands.  She kisses Carol; soft, questioning. Carol’s fingers twist in her flight suit, and she squeezes her eyes shut, gravitating towards Maria like matter to a black hole.

***

Sweat collects at the hollow of Maria’s throat, Carol wants to lick it away.  The fan blows hot air over the both of them. It doesn’t help the heat in the slightest.  Monica’s out having Sunday sundaes with her grandparents, which means Carol gets Maria all to herself.  So really, there’s no reason she can’t lick Maria the way she wants.

“I can hear your brain working,”  Maria grumbles, forearm over her eyes, blocking the shaft of sunlight positioned right on her face.

“Is that so?”  Carol asks, casually leaning over Maria, a smirk on her lips.  They’ve already eaten breakfast, courtesy of Mr. Rambeau, who makes the best darn grits the world has ever seen.  When she kisses Maria all she can still taste is a faint hint of sunny OJ.

“Mmm.”  Maria licks her lips, blinking lazily when Carol pulls back.  They crawled back into bed after breakfast, full to the brim with southern goodness, the boling heat making them sleepy.  “It’s like a clockwork machine up there. Tick tock.” Maria taps the side of Carol’s head. She seems to get distracted then because her fingers tangle in Carol’s hair, combing it out, just holding the strands up to the light.

Carol humours her, bending down to pepper kisses all along her neck.  Maria’s arm slips around her shoulder, pulling her close. Carol can feel the pinpricks of sensation as Maria plays with her hair.

“You’re the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow,”  Maria says as Carol sucks a bruising kiss into her neck.

“What’s that?”  Carol murmurs, not really paying much attention.  She’s too busy being distracted by Maria’s skin beneath her sleep shirt.

“Has your hair always been this yellow?”  Maria asks, hips lifting off the bed. Carol slips down her body, pressing her body firmly to Maria’s as she goes.  She lifts the bottom of Maria’s shirt, kissing below her belly button, smiling when it makes her muscles shift.

“It was whiter when I was a girl,”  Carol says, sitting up, straddling Maria’s thighs.  Maria’s hands come down to rest on her knees, rubbing circles with her thumbs.  “Don’t you remember?” Carol asks, “You used to love braiding it.”

“I may have some memory of that,”  Maria hums, looking up at Carol through heavily-lidded eyes.  Carol holds that gaze as she crosses her arms. Grabbing the bottom of her own shirt, she pulls it over her head, tossing it off the side of the bed.  Maria’s eyes darken with want, and her chest rises and falls that much faster.

Carol’s well aware that she’s got great tits, many people have informed her so.  Some opinions more wanted than others. She’s also well aware that Maria really, really likes them.

Maria rises up on her elbows, abs tensing with the effort, all to get that much closer to Carol.

“Come here,”  she says, and Carol is helpless to obey.  She knee walks up Maria’s body, her hands moving up her thighs as she goes.  Maria’s eyes are still narrowed in on her chest, but every so often they’ll flicker up to her face, softening.

Maria’s fingers slip under the edges of the men’s boxers she wears to sleep, thumbs fitting snugly into the dip between her pelvis and thighs.  Her fingers splay out on Carol’s ass, squeezing. Her gaze moves down Carol’s body, and the careless sweep of it makes wetness bloom between her legs, makes her feel loved, almost as alive as seeing stars right outside her cockpit.

One of Maria’s hands move to her waist, roughly skimming over her skin.  Carol closes her eyes as Maria’s splayed hand slides up her torso, all the way to her sternum.  The back of it touches her left breast, and Carol suddenly finds it very difficult to breathe.

“Do you want my fingers in you?”  Maria asks quietly, and Carol nods yes.

Maria grabs Carol’s pillow tucking it behind her back, sitting up that much closer.  Her hair sticks up at the crown of her head. Carol finds it charming, though she itches to smooth it back.  She drapes her arms over Maria’s shoulders.

“Hey,”  Maria whispers, ducking to kiss her.

There’s a gap in the front of Carol’s boxers, and Maria unbuttons it.  She’s not wearing anything underneath. Maria’s hand slides inside, and Carol’s mouth falls open, shuddering.  Her thighs clench as Maria dips her fingers into Carol’s wetness, middle finger sinking all the way inside, easy as pie.  That’s how wet she is. That’s how much she wants.

Her tongue is thick in her mouth, and when she grips Maria by the neck, pulling her up into a kiss.  She bites at her lips, licks over her teeth, fucks into her mouth like she wishes she could do to her cunt.  Maria shudders, and it fires up Carol even more, really gets her motor going.

Maria gasps, and gives her another finger.  A few minutes later, Carol demonstrates just how much she appreciates the attention when Maria’s spread out on her back, Carol kneeling between her legs.

***

“You're a wild child, babe,”  Maria tells her, sharing a beer under the stars.

Carol brushes her fingers over the baby hairs at little Monica's hairline.  She's fast asleep in her lap, curled up with her thumb in her mouth. Tough and inquisitive at only three years old, she’s exactly like her mother.  Of course there's her propensity for going places she isn't supposed to, and getting into things a toddler shouldn't be getting into, and well, she gets that from her auntie.

Carol leans back in the creaking lawn chair, finger pointed to the heavens just as Michelangelo intended.  The tip covers Alpha Centauri in its entirety.

“I want to touch the stars,”  she says.

Maria chuckles, looking at Carol with round eyes that have never contained anything less than wonder.

They’ve fought battles, the two of them.  Not with guns or bombs, no, that would be too easy.  At least combat comes with a set of rules. In the game of bureaucracy competence means nothing when one doesn't have a dick hanging between their legs.  If DADT is ever repealed, she’s going to tell all the fuckers holding her down that she happens to keep her dick in her girl's underwear drawer. And it’s bigger than all of theirs combined.

Maria links their fingers together, pulling her from her thoughts.

“At the rate you’re going, you'll be kissing galaxies before you know it.”

***

Carol blows up, and she forgets.  She forgets everything.

***

Maria says she’s her best friend, but there’s sadness in her eyes, and Carol’s heart drops into her stomach for reasons she cannot explain.

***

By the time she remembers what they were to each other—really remembers—she’s galaxies away scouting hospitable planets.  It’s only been a year for her, but time dilation is a tricky thing. A century could have passed on C-53, and she wouldn’t even know.  She’s not all that motivated to do the math. Sometimes it’s better not knowing.

“I think I loved her,”  she tells Talos. He carries a memory of his newborn son, the wife, and the daughter he left behind on the main ship.  He understands what she feels better than anyone. They stand side by side looking out into the cosmos. She’s always wanted to touch the stars.  Now she glows like a star in her own right.

“Do you wish to see her again?”  Talos asks.

“I think so,”  Carol says, struggling with memories that still don’t feel real.

“Then you will,”  Talos says firmly, like he’s trying to convince himself of the same.  “Now, have you gone over the data from our habitable zone parameters?”

***

Talos crumbles to dust in Soren’s arms.  When Carol runs outdoors, out of the home she helped them build, she finds two piles of carbon where two beautiful children should be.

Her transmitter beeps.

***

“It’s been a while,”  Maria leans against the door to her Ouachita Parish home in high-waisted jeans, and a tank top spotted with grease.  Grey streaks through her hair, wrinkles sit at the corners of her eyes, and she’s still as gorgeous as the last time Carol saw her.

“Twenty-four years,”  Carol says, sweeping her hair into some semblance of tidiness.  She flew all the way here from Upstate New York in record time. Probably broke the sound barrier three times over.

“I should thank you for saving my daughter.”

“Monica was snapped?”  Carol asks. She didn’t even know.

“Not Monica.  Kendra. She lives with her pa in Baton Rouge.  There’s nothing like dying for a hot minute to make a teenage girl want to call her mother.”

Carol blinks.

“Well, come on inside,”  Maria steps aside, offering her home, and her friendship as she always does; like it’s a given.

Maria pours her a sweet tea, and cuts her a slice of pecan pie; store bought, Maria reassures.  Carol leans against the counter, plate in one hand fork in the other as she watches Maria open and close the fridge, sweep crumbs off the counter, put away the dishes in the drying rack.  Anything so she doesn’t have to look at Carol. She’s fifty-four now, and Carol hasn’t aged a day.

“You got married?”  Carol asks, not at all inquisitively.  She picks up the sweet tea, taking a long drag, a woman parched of the good things in life.

Maria looks at her then, just a quick glance out of the corner of her eye.  “I did,” she says.

“You’re not wearing a ring,”  Carol gestures astutely with the pinky that was wrapped around the glass.

“Whaddya know, I’m not.”  Maria smiles, whirling around, tucking the towel she was using to wipe the counter into her back pocket.  She folds her arms over her chest, a look in her eye that has Carol swallowing nervously.

She glances out the window instead of looking at Maria.  An amphibious plane sits in the yard, stripped and broken down for parts.  She drains the sweet tea, then says, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Carol doesn’t have to specify what she’s talking about.  By the guilty twist of her mouth, Maria knows.

Maria shrugs, leaning against the counter beside Carol.  She leaves an inch of space between them. “You never asked, and you didn’t remember.  I didn’t want to add another thing to your already full plate.” She looks at Carol then, inquisitive.  “But you remember now?”

Carol sets down the glass, and it clinks against the counter.  “Those years feel like a dream.”

Maria laughs, a familiar chime.  “Isn’t that the way all memories feel?”

Carol’s lip quirks inadvertently.  “You’ve got a point there.”

Maria sighs, and finally Carol can see the weight of the years on her shoulders.  “You’re like the summer’s breeze, Carol, you come and you go, but will you at least stay for dinner?”

“I have to get back...”  She trails off at the disappointed look on Maria’s face.  Throat bobbing, she swallows down her fears, her inhibitions.  “Actually, I think I can stay a little while longer,” she amends.

***

Maria serves her a slice of meatloaf, and grits—her dad’s recipe, Carol can taste the bacon fat—and a side of collard greens.

Technically, Carol doesn’t have to eat.  She found that out the hard way, when the Skrulls came uncomfortably close to running out of food in the middle of dark space.  No one is entirely sure what she runs on, but Dr. Banner believes she’s solar powered. So long as visible light can reach her, she does fine, even through solid layers upon layers of spacecraft.  Dr. Banner wants to test out her abilities near the light sucking capabilities of a black hole, but she’s not quite ready for that.

She doesn’t have to eat, but that doesn’t mean she dislikes food.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Food keeps her tethered to her humanity.  It’s just one more reason not to explode into a ball of cosmic energy, giving everyone around her a really bad sunburn.

“What’s Monica up to nowadays?”  Carol asks halfway through the meal.

Maria sets down her knife, a proud smile lighting up her features.  “She’s taken after her mother and auntie. She got her Bachelor’s in physics, like we did, but then she went on to do her Masters.  She just finished her PhD last year.”

“She didn’t enlist?”  Carol asks, remembering a little girl that used to zoom around the yard, arms spread like an airplane.

“No, she’s quite anti-establishment in that regard.”

“Good for her,”  Carol says with a laugh.  After Starforce, and her innumerable crimes against the Skrulls, she’ll never look at military service the same way.

“Soo,”  Maria says, dragging out the vowel.  “What are your plans, now that you’ve saved the universe?”

Carol leans back in her chair, hands folded over her stomach.  “Well, I have to find a good hiding place for some shiny rocks, but after that, I’m open to suggestions.”

Maria hums, elbow braced against the table, cradling her chin in her hand.  “They repealed DADT, you know?”

“It’s about time,”  Carol says with a firm nod.

Maria smiles, a brilliant thing that has Carol’s heart thrumming away.  “You free to take a middle-aged divorcee on a date?”

Carol perks up.  “I never did take you out for dinner, did I?”

Maria shakes her head, biting her lip in way that’s all too familiar.  “You can write a stern letter to Bill Clinton for that.”

Carol grins.  “I’d rather just shoot a photon blast in his general direction, but sure, a stern letter.  That could work.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been fussing over this for the last few days, so this is me giving up, and posting it as it is. Hope you enjoyed, and consider leaving a comment if you did!


End file.
